Cynthia Barnhart | |
|---|---|
| 13th Provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Assumed office March 7, 2022 | |
| Preceded by | Martin A. Schmidt |
| 6th Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| In office 2014–2021 | |
| Preceded by | W. Eric Grimson |
| Succeeded by | Melissa Nobles |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1959 (age 64–65) Barre, Vermont, U.S. |
| Spouse | Mark Baribeau |
| Education | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Civil engineering |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | A network-based primal-dual solution methodology for the multi-commodity network flow problem (1988) |
Cynthia Barnhart (born 1959) is an American civil engineer and academic who has been serving as provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since March 2022. She previously served as the Institute's chancellor from 2014 to 2021.
Barnhart's academic work focuses on transportation and operations research, specifically specializing in developing models, optimization methods and decision support systems for large-scale transportation problems. She also is a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and was an associate dean of the MIT School of Engineering, serving a brief tenure as interim dean of engineering from 2010 to 2011.[1]
Barnhart became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010 for professional leadership and contributions to optimization and transportation models, algorithms, and applications.